AND PORTO SANTO. 35 



district, and the wine of Torre (which is close to the road on the 

 eastward) is perhaps the most esteemed of any in the island. 

 The upper basalt, on the side of the bed of the small torrent, 

 behind Mr. Veitch's Quinta, (2700 feet above the sea,) was in an 

 advanced state of decomposition ; sometimes indeed being so soft 

 as to be sectile, which, as I can only attribute it to a continued 

 action of water, seems to me to indicate that the stream, which 

 now flows many feet beneath it, has gradually deepened its bed, 

 leaving the sides which it formerly washed, in the state we now 

 find them. The softer parts somewhat resemble the decomposing 

 basalt above the transition hmestone at Lisbon ; in the harder, the 

 feldspath ground has acquired a light grey colour, and the long 

 flat crystals of common hornblende imbedded in it, are sometimes 

 glistening, but more frequently in a dull mouldering state : the 

 latter makes a very good building stone. A httle hepatica (sedg- 

 wkkia hemispherica, fig. 25), wliich I believe to be quite new, grows 

 on the borders of the smaller streams^; and in the torrent, I found 

 the marchantia stellata, which, from the abundance of its brown 



phj/salis : from the first it differs, because its corolla is wheel-shaped and not campanii- 

 late; the antheras are oblong ; the stigma is not furrowed; the calyx is bladder-like, 

 and angular, and always of a pale, but bright green ; the stem hairy, and the leaves 

 alternate : to the physalis it presents the following contradictions, the shape of the 

 seeds, the position of the leaves, the flowers being always solitary, and the thick 

 hairiness of the inner fart of the corolla, and of the whole plant : 



Genus. Herschelia. Cal. 5-fidus. cor : calyce ultra duplum longior, rotata, quin- 

 quangulata, lutea, in centro purpurea, intus villosa. Stam. 5, filamenta filiformia, 

 antherse oblongae. Stig. capitatam. Bacca globosa, carnosa, calyce ampliato, vesi- 

 cario, angulato, tecta. Semiua plurima, compressa, rotunda, Caulis suffrutescens, 

 subangulatus, villosus. Folia alterha, subcordiformia, acuminata, subintegra, villosa. 

 Floras solitarii, Sp. 1. H. edulis. 



' Genus. Sedgwickia. Frons aphylla, lobata, glandulis aquosis sparsa. Capsula 

 in fronde sessilis, centralis hemispherica. Seminula, nuda, compressa, membranacea, 

 in hemispherio capsulse. Frondes virides, pulcherrimae, fibris capillavibus ad terram 

 adhserentes. Sp. 1. S'. hemispherica. 



F 2 



